Dredging Up a Sequel / Just in case James Cameron needs ideas for a post-'Titanic' blockbuster

Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, April 18, 1998

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Dredging Up a Sequel / Just in case James Cameron needs ideas for a post-'Titanic' blockbuster

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Matching skill to ego, James Cameron turned "Titanic" into a historic, billion-dollar hit. For most mortals, laurels that big would merit a year's rest. But knowing the self-proclaimed "king of the world," we wouldn't be surprised if he were deeply contemplating a "Titanic" sequel.

Never mind that the ship went down and most of its passengers died. This is Hollywood, and the profit potential for a "Titanic" series is too luscious to resist. Expect to see one of the following before the new millennium.

--"Titanic II -- Jack's Back!"

Picking up where "Titanic" left off, Bill Paxton's team of oceanographers returns to the briny remains of the Titanic with an order to bring Leo back to life! Dredging engineers find Jack Dawson's decayed bones and deliver them to geneticists who replicate his DNA structure and miraculously clone him.

Good news for centenarian sage Rose DeWitt Bukater (Gloria Stuart). Despite the 85-year age difference, Jack the Clone and Rose the Crone reignite their flame in a heartbeat. Thrilling nights at the discotheque, elegant dining, candlelighted sittings with a boldly nude Rose posing for Jack. Bringing Jack up to speed with contemporary culture is hard work. As Rose turns him on to cybersex, cappuccino bars and the subtleties of "The Jerry Springer Show," the lovers bond on deeper levels and build an ocean-view, energy-efficient nest in Malibu Canyon. Stuart, robbed of an Oscar by the younger Kim Basinger, gives a virtuoso performance and finally takes home the gold.

Fifteen hundred people went down with the Titanic, and James Cameron isn't about to forget them. Life's too short to make movies about them all, but Cameron has a fondness for Harold and Lillian Gevertz, a fur dealer and his wife played by that those still-vital Oscar winners Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters.

Opening in 1912, when the Gevertzes celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on board the Titanic, "The Untold Story" flashes back to their early courtship, their lives as 19th century refugees from the Polish shtetls and their breakthroughs, respectively, as a wholesaler in furs and an Olympic gold medalist in freestyle swimming.

Once again, Winters demonstrates the diving technique made famous in "The Poseidon Adventure" (which also starred Borgnine). To fan the promotional flames, Camer on decrees that every single role, no matter how small, be played by an Oscar-winning actor. If you saw that 12-minute salute to past Oscar winners at last month's Academy Awards -- the one that looked like a used-car lot -- here they come!

As the Titanic departs London, the Roma, a smaller ocean liner, ships out of Marseilles bound for Boston. Leonardo DiCaprio is back as Tom Dawson, the aristocratic, separated-at-birth twin of Jack, the doomed artist-adventurer of "Titanic."

Unhappily engaged to Natalie LeFarge, a selfish half-French heiress played by Demi Moore, Tom is preparing to jump from the Roma's deck when he meets the humble but luminous Estrella de Janeiro, a Portuguese peasant from the Azorean island of Fial (also played by Moore, that versatile super-talent).

Wearing a badly stained, standard-issue black mourning dress, Estrella has just escaped steerage, where she midwifed a birth. She spots the distraught Tom, pulls him back to safety and falls deeply in love -- introducing him to the joys of linguica, dairy farming and the Portuguese folk dance chama rita.

As Tom and Estrella make love under the stars and Natalie suffers conspicuously, the ship's radio picks up hysterical messages from the sinking Titanic. "Shall we go rescue them and risk hitting an iceberg?" asks the Roma's captain, played with Oscar-baiting flair by Jeremy Irons. "Hell, no!"

"Titanic II -- Rose Picks Up the Pieces"

Mourning her bold, impetuous Jack, Rose, still played by Kate Winslet, searches for wisdom and redemption and decides that true integrity lies in the artist's life that Jack had chosen. Rejecting the taint of wealth and privilege, she donates her gowns to charity, renounces her uptight family and rents a garret on the Left Bank of Paris.

The flu epidemic of 1918 claims her next lover, a whimsical mime played by Keanu Reeves, at which point Rose volunteers as a Red Cross nurse in World War I. On the European battlefront, Rose falls for Horst, a German prisoner of war played by Leonardo DiCaprio with a buffed body, peroxided hair and a Peter Lorre accent.

Escaping the ravages of war, the couple settle in Berlin, where Rose realizes that Horst is a mere consolation prize for the great love she lost to the deep Atlantic. So it's back to America, where she takes up ceramics, marries modestly and collects Titanic memorabilia. Eventually the phone rings. Some scientists say they've found the Coeur de Mer sapphire . . .